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For two days and nights I laboured. Till my fingers bled. Eyes were red with tiredness. My construction was shaped by sound alone. It’s appearance mattered little to me. My creation was to serve one purpose only. To give the terror in my head physical form. I was giving my nemesis a body. Bringing sense to this sensory failure. Taking control, being master over my mind. I was like a kid, building that strange beast. I kept adding, grafting on parts at night by the blue light of the weld torch. I dissected the TV, the food blender, the motor lawn mower and the washing machine. I Butchered and battered, bashed and banged. Pretty soon the entire living room housed my handy work, my machine. Exhausted, I stood back and examined my art. It had no beginning or end. No top or bottom. A cross breed of the mechanical and electronic. Exposed wires covering it’s surface like varicose veins. I made sure that everything was cocked, wound and powered up to the main line. Then I flicked the switch and watched it spring into life. And there it was. Clanging and whirring, rattling, spluttering, steaming, thumping, droning, crashing, ringing, buzzing and rumbling into existence. An ear shattering cacophony of engineered chaos made flesh. It was perfect. Sound and vision in harmony. I began again to hear my own thoughts above the din. My machine and I became one. We fell into the strange space where silence and mayhem co-exist in parallel. I was free. So I oiled it. I greased it. I cleaned it. I wound it. I fed it. I replaced worn out parts. And above all, I smiled at my own ingenuity in my hours of darkness. For no one else could hear that ugly contraption the way I did. The way I still do. Even now. As I relate this tale. It’s working away. An endless perpetuum of pandemonium.
Clanking…
Whining…
Drumming.
Copyright Nicholas Treadwell 2001
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